Surrender
It was the way the men had gathered
around the stumps, how they had chained them,
hooked and dragged them by tractor
to the largest which would not be uprooted
and then the burning, the slow blackening
by the green Lostine late in September, trucks
circled and water sloshing in the rusted towers
as fire traveled the gnarled pathways deep into earth,
world golden and slipping away that brought me
to my aunt’s bedside. I was ready then.
I knew the way to death. I’d seen the brick
building where they’d left the five cent Nehi sign.
I’d reached into the red cooler for creme soda
in the liquor store where my father worked
his second shift and I knew another of the old ones
was going. Or maybe it was the wooden roadside
crosses, the plastic flowers, the unlit candles
for Kimberly and later Jake, the way the deer
and goats stood high on a cliffside overlooking
the interstate like an ancient petroglyph
that pointed to her passage. I was cooing by then,
following the riff she sang, I hurt, hurt, hurtt. . .
eighty-eight, chest cracked and stitched, her valves
replaced part pig, part calf, her eyes closed
as she called her sister out of the wind. Did she
hear us calling her? I don’t know. I was confused
telling her to go on when I might have meant
go on over. But yesterday she laughed and told me
she’d spent one of those long days at a bar
in Long Beach tossing back at least three shots
of Johnny Walker. This as she bickered with her sister,
so familiar a cloud of pipesmoke from the old house
in 1956 or ‘57 enveloped me,
and when her dead husband’s last remaining brother
entered the room, bowed and kissed first her hand,
then mine, I thought they’d all been resurrected
and didn’t know why I’d been so ready to say goodbye.
What was it I wanted to move on to? I thought
of each white heron I’d seen standing in the reeds,
and one in particular in the Applegate River,
its patience as it waited for the flit of shadow,
and how alone in mid-afternoon I listen to Callas
wondering if I could say why since I know nothing
about opera but the rain, the tears and then I knew
if asked I’d say it’s because she sings me down
the dark corridor where the roots are glowing.
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